October 9, 2011

From a NYT "36 Hours in Ann Arbor" piece. As an aging person who really did frequent Dominick's in the 1960s when I was a young hippie, I'm glad to know it's the first place an outsider dropping in for the essence of Ann Arbor ought to eat.

I haven't been back to Ann Arbor since the 1970s, but I spent an awful lot of time in the geographic zone around Dominick's. I didn't go to the law school, which is right there. I went to the School of Architecture and Design, which used to be right next to the law school, and I lived in East Quad for 2 years. And just over to the left is Krazy Jim's Blimpy Burger. I worked there.

Now serving the 5th generation of Blimpy Addicts, we grind our own beef fresh from choice Western chuck. Then our friendly, personable staff throws the rounded balls of meat onto the grill, smashes them flat with a spatula and cooks your burger to crumbly perfection.

Ha. I remember when Jim used to grind up a huge vat of meat and we stood around in the walk-in refrigerator using ice cream scoops to transform it into those meatballs. Krazy Jim's didn't make it into the NYT's recommended 36 hours. Who knows why? Some kind of rule against greasy food?

There's a cult horror called The Howling that I recently watched via streamed Netflix. The movie's end credits roll over a close-up of a hamburger frying on a gridle(?) which was being occasionally smashed in a similar manner to the Krazy Jim style. It looked wasteful to me, a least a third of the meat just stuck to the frying surface and turned into greasy carbon. BTW, if you've never seen The Howling you owe yourself a glimpse, even if you're not a horror/fantasy aficionado, it's deliciously over the top in nearly every scene. Dee Wallace morphing into a Yorkshire terrier is worth the price of admission alone.

I attended Michigan b-school (before it was called Ross) and spent lots of time at Dominick's. I haven't been back for a while but looking at the map in the NYT that portion of the campus has changed significantly.

Blimpy's has gotten a lot more famous since Ann's day....but we can do better.

Clarification please, what do you mean by "Blimpy's"? Is that the same as Krazy Jim's Blimpy Burger? Or is it Blimpie? I used to work in a franchise Blimpie in my college days. We served some excellent subs, but our beer, on the menu as "Blimpie Brewski", was questionable. We got it by the 15.5 gallon keg from the Miller guy. It was just marked "BEER" in black USA stencil letters. We sold it in 20oz. cups for 99 cents with any sub. Blitzed underclassmen filled that place from open to close. Good sandwich, though.

Yes, Quaestor, Blimpy's is Krazy Jim's as Ann referred to it in her article, not Blimpies the sandwich chain.

Krazy Jim's a nice tradition in the winter. I don't know who does it, but when there's plenty of snow, someone always carves interesting "snow bears" around the place...usually a whole family of them! Pretty neat to see.

Every college town has one or more dives or eateries which seem to endure the evolving trends of fashionable food. In Raleigh we had a place we called Red's, its actual name if it had one was generally unknown. It was a tiny place, about fifteen feet by thirty, wedged under the stairwell leading to a upper floor strip club. It was dominated by the bar along the long wall and a few booths. The Grade C sanitation certificate was prominently displayed -- proudly average cleanliness since whenever. The operator was this shriveled old guy with a red toupee perched above his own gray fringe, hence the eatery's moniker. Appalling. But the food was great. He made a deli-style ruben that I would kill for. The best one I've eaten anywhere, including New York, except for the one served by the best deli I've ever known, located in Nova, Florida of all places. A tale for another time.

Red's was also known as "the ruben place" and to the cops as a notorious drug-vending location. So you could go to Reds for a ruben, or go to Ruben's to get some reds.

IT is not just the throngs of University of Michigan students dressed in maize and blue singing “Hail to the Victors” that makes Ann Arbor the ultimate college town each fall.

No, it's also the snotty attitude of total moral superiority from so many associated with the school. [Not that I don't have friends there, I do, but you have to live near but outside A-squared to get the true feeling.] ;->=

Let me point out that my wife and I go to Ann Arbor periodically to shop [her -- I could scarcely care, but she loves it] in funky and nice stores, or to eat in some really great restaurants [although for authentic Indian street food you have to be at NeeHee's in Canton, oddly enough] especially Zingerman's which is truly worth the visit.

I have also enjoyed music at The Ark [Doctor John unmiked accompanied by guitar and tuba was great].

And there's lots of stuff there for kids, too.

However, it also has some kind of weird West Coast political vibe that can be off-putting unless you're pretty much on the mindless Left. [A2 makes Madison {which I've visited and mostly enjoyed} seem like an oasis of Midwestern stability and good manners, most of the time.]

The name in the window, at least in the 1960s, was Krazy Jim's, Home of the Blimpy Burger. At that time there were two of them. The one at E. Quad, that we've been talking about and a second one up by University Hospital. The secret was, of course, the high fat content of the meat and the specific griddle used, (i.e., the type of steel). Blimpy's were great at all times, but best on Sunday mornings when trying to lose a hangover.

I was in A2 from '92 to '95. As one of the few married students I lived off-campus at the Hidden Valley Apts on State St. Chris Webber was my next-door neighbor but I rarely ever saw him.

My first kid was born at Women's Hospital and I imagined that he'd also attend Michigan but he's now a freshman at Madison and a Badger through and through. I couldn't even talk him into making a campus visit to Ann Arbor.

One thing I've noticed is how kids here are steeped in Wisconsin traditions, its quite unlike any other place I've lived. It appears that every child gets an opportunity to visit the state capitol by 5th grade.

I was a Pretzel Bell guy myself, mainly because I had a musician friend who played in the group there. He was also a law student and later became a well known sports arbitrator. His wife went to law school a few years later at Georgetown. She did rather well--Supreme Court clerk and now a high faulting' law professor. The music and beer were good and P=Bell was a lot of fun.

I was in grad school in history. I had come from a small New England liberal arts college and at first was put off by the size of the Michigan campus. I quickly came to love it. Amazing resources and an outstanding history faculty. The Midwest land grant universities are as good as it gets educationally, as long as you are willing to work at it.

My old New England liberal arts college is still quite highly ranked, but imho it's a mess educationally, socially, politically and financially.

I just read that Williams (which was not my school) had 52% of its freshman class getting financial aid. That means that 48% come from families that can afford over $50k per year for undergraduate education. And they say that diversity is one of their best qualities.

We have a place called Grover’s where I live, that was one time Grover Cleveland's hunting lodge. Yes, that Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two terms not consecutively, former mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York.

I was an A-squared townie, but only 8-years old in 1970 when Althouse was around. Student hippies were my idols growing up . . . good pedigree Anne. Now we have big government hippies -- how counter to the "movement" can you get? Are the true freaks in the tea party now?

I always figured they called it Krazy Jim's because they weren't open on Sunday. Business-wise, that was crazy! When I went there, the dorm meal plans didn't serve dinner on Sundays, only lunch; and South Quad and West Quad, two HUGE dorms, were both just a short block from Krazy Jim's. They could've raked in a fortune on Sunday dinners.